“It must be a wild place.”
“Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men—”
“Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation.”
“The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not? There are two questions waiting for us at the outset. The one is whether any crime has been committed at all; the second is, what is the crime and how was it committed? Of course, if Dr. Mortimer’s surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. I think we’ll shut that window again, if you don’t mind. It is a singular thing, but I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought.60 I have not pushed it to the length of getting into a box to think, but that is the logical outcome of my convictions. Have you turned the case over in your mind?”
“Yes, I have thought a good deal of it in the course of the day.”
“What do you make of it?”
“It is very bewildering.”
“It has certainly a character of its own. There are points of distinction about it. That change in the footprints, for example. What do you make of that?”
“Mortimer said that the man had walked on tiptoe down that portion of the alley.”
“He only repeated what some fool had said at the inquest. Why should a man walk on tiptoe down the alley?”
“What then?”
“He was running, Watson—running desperately, running for his life, running until he burst his heart and fell dead upon his face.”
“Running from what?”
“There lies our problem. There are indications that the man was crazed with fear before ever he began to run.”
“How can you say that?”
“I am presuming that the cause of his fears came to him across the moor. If that were so, and it seems most probable, only a man who had lost his wits would have run from the house instead of towards it. If the gipsy’s evidence may be taken as true, he ran with the cries for help in the direction where help was least likely to be. Then again, whom was he waiting for that night, and why was he waiting for him in the Yew Alley rather than in his own house?”
“You think that he was waiting for someone?”
“The man was elderly and infirm. We can understand his taking an evening stroll, but the ground was damp and the night inclement. Is it natural that he should stand for five or ten minutes, as Dr. Mortimer, with more practical sense than I should have given him credit for, deduced from the cigar ash?”
“But he went out every evening.”
“I think it unlikely that he waited at the moor-gate every evening. On the contrary, the evidence is that he avoided the moor. That night he waited there. It was the night before he was to take his departure for London. The thing takes shape, Watson. It becomes coherent. Might I ask you to hand me my violin, and we will postpone all further thought upon this business until we have had the advantage of meeting Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry Baskerville in the morning.”
45 That is, a blacksmith.
46 Peter H. Wood, in “He Has Been Farming in Canada,” studies the subject in some detail. Although Wood suggests that Henry Baskerville spent some time in Virginia, the exact place in Western Canada where he farmed remains unknown. Wood traces the history of several Western Canadian farms, including one frequented by the outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, a k a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
47 Note that ten minutes have mysteriously passed.
48 In this context, the administrative body of the local Church of England parish.
49 Another fifteen minutes vanishes. Apparently Watson has omitted much of the actual dialogue.
50 It is tempting to identify this club as the United Service Club, founded in May 1831 as the general military club for naval and military officers. Ralph Nevill, in his London Clubs, Their History and Treasures, observes that the club had the nickname “Cripplegate”—“from the prevailing advanced years and infirmity of its members… . The United Service contains many interesting pictures, [including a portrait of] Major-General Charles G. Gordon, by Dickinson, from a photograph… . In the upper billiard-room is a picture of the Battle of Trafalgar, the frame of which is wood from the timbers of the Victory.” The United Service Club faces Pall Mall, and Watson must have joined it after the events of “The Greek Interpreter,” for he would surely otherwise have mentioned the proximity of “his” club to that of Mycroft.
In “The Clubbable Watson,” Dean Dickensheet argues that Watson would have been excluded by the cliques as a mere army doctor and suggests that Watson was a member of the Savage Club, located at Nos. 6 and 7 Adelphi Terrace, near Cox & Co. (where Watson’s tin dispatch-box filled with untold tales was on deposit—see “The Veiled Lodger”), as well as the Author’s Club, of which Arthur Conan Doyle was also a member.
51 Karl Baedeker’s London and Its Environs: Handbook for Travellers (1896) gives “E. Stanford” of 26 Cockspur Street, Charing Cross, as the agent for the Ordnance Survey Maps.
52 Philip Weller, in “Moor Maps and Mileages,” points out that no single Ordnance map of Dartmoor fits the description provided by Watson. Jay Finley Christ, in “A Very Large Scale Map,” using such maps, concludes that no place shown on the maps meets all of the necessary determinants. “It is for cartologists, amateur and pro, to determine which places were fictional and which were pure Devon; and [echoing a footnote in Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd] it is our happy privilege to indicate that some of the distances and places ‘do not answer precisely to the [Canonical] description.’ And so much the worse for them!”
53 Holmes means “large-scale” in the sense of a map of a small area, showing fine details. In 1801, the first series of 1-inch maps (that is, one inch equalling 63,360 inches [1 mile]) of England were produced. The year 1846 saw the production of larger-scale maps of England (6 inches equalling one mile), and very large-scale maps (25 inches to the mile) were produced in 1855.
The terminology can be confusing: “Large-scale” means smaller numbers if the “representative fraction,” or “RF,” scale is used. This method gives as the ratio of map distances to actual distance on the surface of the Earth, without indication of units (for example, 1:63,360, 1:10,060). (Note that there are 12 x 5,280, or 63,360, inches to the mile.) According to the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th Ed.), the typical Ordnance Survey parish map had a large scale of 1:2500, the typical town map a very large scale of 1:500 (and, of course, consisted of numerous sheets). Thus a map at the normal 1-inch (1:63,360 RF) scale showing a radius of five miles (10 miles wide) would be 10 inches wide, while a 6-inch scale map (1:10,060) would be 5 feet square. At the parish scale of 1:2500, a five-mile radius requires a map over 20 feet square and at the town scale of 1:500 would be over 100 feet square! (Sabine Baring-Gould’s fine handbook entitled Devon [1907] reproduces the entire area on a map about two feet square, which uses a scale of 4 miles to the inch (that is, 1:253,440), but of course this does not show anything so small as a “clump of buildings.”) If Holmes had only a single map showing the relevant area, it was likely a 6-inch scale map, which would be convenient to use if folded. Watson states that Holmes “unrolled” a section—rolling such a map would have produced an unwieldy five-foot-long tube!
Section of map of Dartmoor (original scale 4 miles to 1 inch, reproduced here at approximately 10 miles to 1 inch). Sabine Baring-Gould, Devon, 1907
54 While there is no “Grimpen” listed in either Beeton’s British Gazetteer or Karl Baedeker’s Great Britain: Handbook for Travellers, several sources note Grimspound, characterised in Baedeker as “a curious enclosure, the object of which is uncertain.” Sabine Baring-Gould’s Devon describes it in more detail as “a circular enclosure in singularly perfect condition, with a gateway, paved, to the S.E. It encloses 24 hut circles, of wh
ich at least 12 can be proved to have been inhabited. The settlement belongs to the early Bronze Age.”
Numerous commentators consider the true identity of “Grimpen” and the “Grimpen Mire.” David L. Hammer, in The Game Is Afoot, concludes that the village is actually Hexworthy. This is based on his conclusion that Brook Manor is Baskerville Hall (see Appendix 4). Bernard Davies, in “Radical Rethinks on Baskervillean Problems—I,” points out in admirable detail that the layout of the village of Postbridge and that of Grimpen are virtually identical. He dismisses the absence of a nearby mire by pointing out that the Grimpen Mire had not always been there, and it may just as well have vanished as mysteriously as it appeared. He also identifies Laughter Hole Farm as Lafter Hall and Stannon as Merripit House but offers no identification of Baskerville Hall. The identification of Postbridge as Grimpen is also made by Anthony Howlett, in Some Observations on the Dartmoor of Sherlock Holmes.
Philip Weller, in The Dartmoor of “The Hound of the Baskervilles”: A Practical Guide to the Sherlock Holmes Locations, sums up various candidates: Grimspound (no houses, no mire); Widecombe in the Moor (far from any mires); Postbridge (no mires, no suitable Baskerville Hall), Poundsgate (no suitable mire); Holne (large village, a little too close to a Baskerville Hall candidate); and Hexworthy (meets all requirements, except a post office; mail was delivered to and collected from the Hexworthy pub).
In a subsequent article, entitled “Take Moor Care: Some Considerations of Playing the Game on Dartmoor,” Weller rejects Davies’s identification of Postbridge (without specifically referring to Davies’s article), pointing out that Stannon Mire, near Postbridge, while shown on some maps as a “mire,” “even in Victorian times … was cultivated, and those who walk across it will find it difficult to find a spot where one can sink more than a foot into the mud, even in the wettest of seasons.” He raises other objections to Davies’s Merripit House on the basis of its proximity to other residences.
Weller perhaps best sums up the entire quandary when he writes: “It has to be admitted from the outset that, apart from those few locations in the case which are given their real Dartmoor names … , none of the Dartmoor locations … have been definitively identified.”
55 If “the narrative” refers to the narration of the legend of the Hound, Holmes is incorrect; Lafter Hall is not mentioned there. William S. Baring-Gould writes that there is no Lafter Hall on their map but a Laughter Tor, “and it seems fair to assume that Laughter (‘Lafter’) Hall stood somewhere in its vicinity.” David L. Hammer, in For the Sake of the Game, discards that attribution, as there are no halls in the vicinity of the Tor.
Watson, later writing to Holmes from Baskerville Hall, describes “Lafter Hall” as “four miles to the south of us.” Philip Weller considers the candidates: Laughter Hole Farm (near a Grimpen candidate but no suitable Baskerville Hall to the north); Hannaford Manor (no suitable Hall to the north); Spitchwick Manor (no Moor views, no suitable Hall to the north); White-Oxen Manor (close to Hall candidates but no Moor views and no views of approaches to stone huts); Leigh Grange (no Moor views); Greendown (no Moor views); and Hayford Hall (ideal in all respects except, unfortunately, it was only a farm and not a “hall” until 1912, long after the events here).
56 Baring-Gould locates a Higher Tor and a Higher White Tor but no High Tor.
57 Presumably this is a place, not the name of a farm house.
58 Pointing out that the moor’s south-east corner forms a quadrant from the prison varying in radius from seven to eleven miles, in The Dartmoor of “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” Philip Weller calculates that fourteen miles from the prison would be off the moor altogether, and that “fourteen” is possibly a typographical error and should read “four.” Weller adds, in “Moor Maps and Mileages,” that “fourteen miles” was apparently a colloquialism for any long distance.
59 See note 218 of The Sign of Four, above.
60 T. S. Blakeney draws our attention to “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” in which Watson shares a room at The Cedars with Holmes. While Watson sleeps, Holmes stays up all night thinking and goes through “an ounce of shag tobacco.” “If it is true that the English people enjoy a ‘frowst’ more than others,” Blakeney writes—”frowst” meaning a stuffy or stale odour—“Holmes was, on unimpeachable testimony, English of the English.”
CHAPTER
IV
SIR HENRY BASKERVILLE
OUR BREAKFAST-TABLE was cleared early, and Holmes waited in his dressing-gown for the promised interview. Our clients were punctual to their appointment, for the clock had just struck ten when Dr. Mortimer was shown up, followed by the young baronet.61 The latter was a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows, and a strong, pugnacious face. He wore a ruddy-tinted tweed suit, and had the weather-beaten appearance of one who has spent most of his time in the open air, and yet there was something in his steady eye and the quiet assurance of his bearing which indicated the gentleman.
“This is Sir Henry Baskerville,” said Dr. Mortimer.
“Why, yes,” said he, “and the strange thing is, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, that if my friend here had not proposed coming round to you this morning I should have come on my own. I understand that you think out little puzzles, and I’ve had one this morning which wants more thinking out than I am able to give to it.”
“Pray take a seat, Sir Henry. Do I understand you to say that you have yourself had some remarkable experience since you arrived in London?”
Sir Henry Baskerville.
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1901
“Nothing of much importance, Mr. Holmes. Only a joke, as like as not. It was this letter, if you can call it a letter, which reached me this morning.”
He laid an envelope upon the table, and we all bent over it. It was of common quality, greyish in colour. The address, “Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel,”62 was printed in rough characters; the post-mark “Charing Cross,”63 and the date of posting the preceding evening.
“Who knew that you were going to the Northumberland Hotel?” asked Holmes, glancing keenly across at our visitor.
Northumberland Avenue from Trafalgar Square (1894).
The “Northumberland Hotel”?
“No one could have known. We only decided after I met Dr. Mortimer.”
“But Dr. Mortimer was, no doubt, already stopping there?”
“No, I had been staying with a friend,” said the doctor. “There was no possible indication that we intended to go to this hotel.”
“Hum! Someone seems to be very deeply interested in your movements.” Out of the envelope he took a half-sheet of foolscap paper folded into four. This he opened and spread flat upon the table. Across the middle of it a single sentence had been formed by the expedient of pasting printed words upon it. It ran:
AS YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE OR YOUR REASON KEEP AWAY FROM THE MOOR.
The word “moor” only was printed in ink.
“Now,” said Sir Henry Baskerville, “perhaps you will tell me Mr. Holmes, what in thunder is the meaning of that, and who is it that takes so much interest in my affairs?”
“What do you make of it, Dr. Mortimer? You must allow that there is nothing supernatural about this, at any rate?”
“No, sir, but it might very well come from someone who was convinced that the business is supernatural.”64
“What business?” asked Sir Henry, sharply. “It seems to me that all you gentlemen know a great deal more than I do about my own affairs.”
“You shall share our knowledge before you leave this room, Sir Henry. I promise you that,” said Sherlock Holmes. “We will confine ourselves for the present, with your permission, to this very interesting document, which must have been put together and posted yesterday evening. Have you yesterday’s Times, Watson?”
“It is here in the corner.”
“Might I trouble you for it—the inside page, please, with the leading articles?”65 H
e glanced swiftly over it, running his eyes up and down the columns. “Capital article this on Free Trade.66 Permit me to give you an extract from it.
You may be cajoled into imagining that your own special trade or your own industry will be encouraged by a protective tariff, but it stands to reason that such legislation must in the long run keep away wealth from the country, diminish the value of our imports, and lower the general conditions of life in this island.
“He glanced swiftly over it.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1901
What do you think of that, Watson?” cried Holmes, in high glee, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. “Don’t you think that is an admirable sentiment?”
Dr. Mortimer looked at Holmes with an air of professional interest, and Sir Henry Baskerville turned a pair of puzzled dark eyes upon me.
“I don’t know much about the tariff and things of that kind,” said he; “but it seems to me we’ve got a bit off the trail so far as that note is concerned.”
“On the contrary, I think we are particularly hot upon the trail, Sir Henry. Watson here knows more about my methods than you do, but I fear that even he has not quite grasped the significance of this sentence.”
“No, I confess that I see no connection.”
“And yet, my dear Watson, there is so very close a connection that the one is extracted out of the other. ‘You,’ ‘your,’ ‘your,’ ‘life,’ ‘reason,’ ‘value,’ ‘keep away,’ ‘from the.’ Don’t you see now whence these words have been taken?”
“By thunder, you’re right! Well, if that isn’t smart!” cried Sir Henry.
“If any possible doubt remained it is settled by the fact that ‘keep away’ and ‘from the’ are cut out in one piece.”
“Well, now—so it is!”
“Really, Mr. Holmes, this exceeds anything which I could have imagined,” said Dr. Mortimer, gazing at my friend in amazement. “I could understand anyone saying that the words were from a newspaper; but that you should name which, and add that it came from the leading article, is really one of the most remarkable things which I have ever known. How did you do it?”
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes Page 52
